Pictures from this day can be found here.
Our holiday started with a meet-up in Kobe after Kuniko finished a half day of work. We met in Motomachi, and then went to a restaurant that served yo-shoku, supposedly “western” food like omu-rice, fried shrimp and hamburg. It was pretty good and there was a short wait because it was so popular at lunch hour. From there we went on to Kansai airport and caught a flight to Shanghai shortly thereafter.
We arrived in Shanghai at around 6:30 with about five hours to kill, and a new airport to explore. It started off innocently enough, with a margarita and a do-it-yourself vodka tonic at a nearby bar. Actually there were several similar bars located throughout the airport, but they staggered their closing times, with the central bar (we found out later) open 24 hours.
We walked around looking for an open restaurant, but it seemed like everything was closing around 8 pm. With a departure from the airport schedule for 11:55 pm, we had lots of extra time, so we ended up finding one last open restaurant to have a Chinese feast. The food turned out to be pretty good, but the restaurant was overstaffed, and with just a few customers in a giant restaurant, it was a little unnerving to eat with so many staff standing around watching you (and they did watch you carefully). Also I accidentally over-ordered, so we could finish only about 60% of the meal. Luckily, the food was very cheap thanks to the exchange rate, and so overall it was a marginal success. The staff all tried to speak to Kuniko in Chinese, a fact that was increasingly amusing to me (not to her, though) the longer we were at the airport.
Only after we finished dinner did we realize that there were some other shopping areas and restaurants around, so we ended up having more choices than we knew about. Oh, well. After dinner we had a lot of time to kill, so we walked around the huge airport, and we even had the option to leave and come back – thanks to a strange international transfer system. Normally I need to pay big money for a travel visa because I am an American, but they let me out into the real world, so with a little planning next time we could take the train into town and have some local food. By the end of our stay in the airport we were pretty exhausted, so we were half asleep as we boarded the plane to Frankfurt at midnight.
We flew on China Eastern airlines, which was almost the cheapest flight (only Aeroflot was less) and had a reasonably positive experience. Mainly we slept. The flight lasted about 11 hours, and I slept through five of them, so that was a new personal record for me. The highlight of the trip was the cabin attendants leading group exercises during the last hour of flight. Good idea, interestingly implemented.
Upon touching down at Frankfurt airport we looked out the window and saw rainy conditions, and so that had me a little worried. The first day called for a day on the river cruising and tasting wine, and doing it in the rain didn’t look like fun. Immigration was surprisingly easy – no forms to fill out, just a passport check, a stamp, and then we were in.
We caught a bus from the terminal we were in to the other terminal that had a train station connected, and then found the intercity trains. This was the first time in a long time that we had used European trains, so we were a little confused about the process, and it was a bit stressful finding the right train and the right platform. Looking back at it now we did almost all the right things, but at the time we were feeling a little stress about it, despite all my planning and some support documents that I had brought along.
We ended up on the S9 to the town of Mainz (pronounced Mine-z) but we noticed that the train bypassed our station completely and went to another terminal station. We got out, looked around the station, and realized that we should be back on the same train we came in on. Rushed back to the train and took two stops to the Mainz station. Not sure if we were supposed to do it that way or not, but it only took a few minutes and a little bit of confusion before we got back on the right path. I would suck at the Amazing Race, that’s for sure.
At the station we stopped into the local convenience store to buy “Troy the Sixth” the latest in a long line of small folding umbrellas that we have bought while traveling overseas. Troy the Sixth did a great job, and earned a trip home with us to Japan – a solid purchase. He certainly lasted longer than Troy the Second who died a quick death in Dijon, France.
From the station Kuniko navigated us on foot through the quiet town of Mainz. It was Sunday morning around 8 a.m., so most people were at home sleeping, and almost every shop was closed. Our destination was the Rhine river at the edge of town, and while walking there the rain got heavier and heavier. When we arrived we saw our ship waiting for us Рthe KD cruise line Рand we rushed to catch it just in time. We set up inside in the caf̩/restaurant and had some hot coffee to warm us up, and soon after the ship departed and started cruising down the river.
The scenery was really quite nice – the Rhine is quite a large river and there was plenty of traffic going both ways. There was lots of shipping up and down the river, so it was much busier than I expected. After cruising for about 15 minutes the rain let up, and we went upstairs to enjoy the view from on top of the cruise ship just as blue sky started appearing. By the time we started seeing vineyards, it was sunshine and blue skies, and our spirits rose accordingly. After consulting our guidebooks and some timetables we decided to make a stop at the wine town of Rudelsheim.
Rudelsheim at first glance is a touristy town on the edge of the river surrounded by vineyards and wineries. There was plenty to do while we were there Рwe tasted wine at several places (and bought a bottle of wine at each place to take with us because the prices were so much lower than what we are used to) Рand we also took a gondola up the hillside to enjoy some spectacular views of the river and the wine region. At the top of the hill there was even an old organ grinder guy with a fake monkey. Like I said, it was touristy there. Since we had three hours to kill before the next boat we also enjoyed some (giant) beers at a caf̩, did some shopping and had some delicious sandwiches at a bakery.
The sandwiches looked delicious in the shop window and tasted even better. German bread turned out to be one of the big surprises of the trip – every time we had German bread we were impressed at how delicious it was. Some had dark grain, some had olives or nuts, but all were consistently good wherever we were in Germany.
We were really enjoying taking in the town – interesting architecture, easy to travel by foot, and plenty of surprises around every corner. Eventually we figured it was time to go, so we caught the next boat down the river and continued our journey.
We procured some good seats on the roof of the boat, and continued to enjoy the sunny weather. Our energy level was still high despite being awake for such a long time – which was good because there were still several hours ahead on the boat before we reached our destination.
The next stretch of the river had lots of castles mixed in with all the steep hillside vineyards, and it was interesting to turn the next bend and see another dramatic old castle perched on the mountains. It was a great way to see everything at a slow pace. By late afternoon the day started catching up us, however, and we retired to the restaurant downstairs to enjoy the view through the windows instead of being in the weather. As it turns out it was a good idea – a squall came throw soon after we took a table downstairs, and suddenly the tables around us filled up completely as people came out of the rain.
Finally we reached our destination about halfway down the river to Cologne at a mid-sized town called Koblenz. The boat stopped at the Deutsch Eck, a waterside area that was under some construction when we arrived. From there we walked across town through a large street festival to find our hotel. It was a simple, clean business hotel and it was nice to unload our backpacks (finally) after carrying them around all day. I guess it didn’t help that we bought a couple of bottles of wine during the day – those are heavy.
After dropping off our gear and cleaning up a bit we asked our hotel clerk for restaurant recommendations, and she suggested a great local restaurant called Alt Koblenz. It was just down the street in the corner of a city square, and they served lots of local specialties. We had some local wine by the glass and our first dinner in Germany: Kuniko had the weinerschnitzel with egg on top as a variation, and I had “Deutsch Eck Toast” – grilled pork with mushrooms served over toast with coleslaw. Very delicious, and after a failed search for an open supermarket we retired to bed to get some much-needed rest.
